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The Lantern Woman of Bhootnath Lane
It was the night before Halloween, though in India, not many cared for pumpkins or costumes. But in a small hill town called Ranchi, people whispered that spirits didn’t need a foreign festival to walk the earth—they had their own reasons.
Armaan had just moved there for work—an IT job he could’ve done from anywhere, but the rent here was cheap and the misty hills felt like peace. That night, after finishing his shift, he went for a walk through Bhootnath Lane, a narrow road lined with old banyan trees and flickering streetlights.
“Don’t go out late near that lane,” his landlady, Mrs. D’Souza, had warned.
“Why? Stray dogs?” he laughed.
“Not dogs. A woman with a lantern,” she’d said, her eyes sharp even behind her glasses. “If you see her light—don’t look twice.”
He thought it was just local superstition. But when he reached the middle of the lane, the fog thickened like milk in tea. The streetlight above him buzzed, then died. And through the grey veil, he saw it—
a faint golden glow, swinging gently.
At first, he smiled. Someone walking home, maybe. But the light drew closer—too smoothly, too silently. No footsteps. No rustle. Just the sound of her voice, soft like wind through old leaves.
“You look lost, beta… are you looking for light?”
Armaan froze.
The woman wore a white saree, not quite dirty, not quite clean, as if time had forgotten her. Her face was half-shadowed by the lantern she held, its flame too steady for the wind that howled around them.
He stepped back. “No, ma’am. I’m—uh—just heading home.”
She tilted her head. “So was I… before they built this road over my house.”
The mist swirled, and suddenly he saw it—the outlines of old bricks, a faint wall where the road now stood. Her lantern burned brighter, revealing a shape beneath her feet: not ground, but the faint shimmer of water.
She wasn’t standing on the road. She was standing above the old well Mrs. D’Souza had mentioned—a well that had been sealed years ago after someone fell in.
Armaan didn’t wait to think. He turned and ran, heart hammering, the sound of her anklets following for a few steps before stopping completely. When he reached his house, his phone buzzed—a message from an unknown number.
It was a photo.
Him, standing on the lane.
And behind him—
the woman, smiling, holding the lantern up to his face.
The timestamp read 11:59 PM, October 30.
Every year since then, at the same minute, his phone lights up again—
and somewhere in the distance, the faint glow of a lantern sways through the mist.
Stake id: FahadAlam07